“That won’t take long,” Jerry said. “Now I’ll write to Professor Snodgrass, and tell him we’ll soon be with him.”
Thus the matter was decided. The names of Ned, Bob and Jerry were formally entered for admission to Boxwood Hall, and their standing in their studies was such that they had to take but few examinations.
In the letter to Professor Snodgrass Jerry explained how it had all come about, and he thanked the little scientist for having sent the catalogue.
“Only for that,” Jerry wrote, “we might have been packed off to some place where we wouldn’t have liked it at all. I’m afraid we won’t get a chance to go hunting butterflies with you, much as we would like it.”
In reply Jerry had another letter from the bug-collector. Professor Snodgrass wrote that there would be plenty of chance for him to have outings with the boys.
“That’s fine!” cried Jerry. “Hurrah for Boxwood Hall!”
Imagine a great, green, grassy bowl, nestled snugly amid a succession of green hills, set, more or less regularly, in a circle. And at the bottom of the great, green, grassy bowl, which is miles across, imagine further a silvery sheet, irregular in outline and sparkling in the sun.
Up on one of the sides of the green, grassy bowl, where it leveled out into a sort of plateau, is a group of dull, red buildings, their maroon color contrasting pleasingly with the emerald tint of the surroundings. Across the tip of another hill lay a country town, and from a vantage point one could see a railroad, like a shiny snake, winding its way up to the town, stopping there, in the shape of a station, and then going on across the valley.
The town is that of Fordham--a city some called it. It was in New England, about half way between Boston and New York. The green bowl was Fordham valley, and the shining, glittering bottom of it was Lake Carmona, a beautiful sheet of water, some miles in extent.
The group of red buildings was Boxwood Hall with which we shall soon concern ourselves, and which was very much in the minds of Ned, Bob and Jerry at this moment, as it had been for some time. The college buildings were about a mile, or, say a mile and a half to be exact, from the Fordham railroad station, and were practically on the shore of Lake Carmona, for the college owned the land running down to the lake, and had on it a boathouse and a dock. But the buildings themselves lay back a quarter of a mile from the water, and this quarter of a mile, somewhat less in width, formed the college campus--one not surpassed anywhere.